Some medical professionals, though, are less eager to promote maintenance doses of semaglutide.
Dr. Katy Williams recently said that if major weight loss isn’t your goal, it may be more beneficial to make lifestyle changes first — like changes to diet and exercise habits — than to expose yourself to the potential side effects of GLP-1s, which range from nausea and dizziness to more severe cases like eating disorders, pancreatitis and thyroid cancer.
That being said, microdoses do have key differences from standard doses. For example, it’s likely they won’t lead to the same dramatic decrease in appetite. But ultimately, they need to be studied more.
“The intent here is to have some therapeutic effects,” Aziz said. Based on the information we have now, it’s possible that small doses could help address inflammation, what he calls “a hallmark of aging.”
2. Epitalon
Another hallmark of aging? Shortened telomeres.
“As the cells divide, your telomeres — the end caps of chromosomes — get shorter and shorter,” Aziz explained. “And eventually there is no more cell division, and there’s cell death. So longer telomeres mean longer life. Shorter telomeres means shorter life.”
He added that epitalon is a peptide that few doctors know about, but one that’s been developed to counteract this very process. By activating a specific enzyme, it lengthens telomeres, which is thought to delay cellular aging.
In one study on the effects of epitalon on rat cells, the peptide “induced the active proliferation of the cultured cells.” Another study, this time on human fetal tissue, found that epitalon-treated cells “demonstrated high telomere lengths,” which led the authors to believe that epitalon has some anti-aging capacities. The treated cells continued dividing long after the untreated cells stopped.
And while epitalon needs significantly more study on human subjects, Aziz insisted on its multitude of benefits. “It improves sleep, skin health and appearance as an antioxidant,” he said. “It heals injuries and prevents some age-related diseases like cancer, heart disease and dementia.”
